I went to the Boston Bruins practice last week. I’ve been away from hockey for the most part over the last 10 years. Since September, I have been playing once per week. The practice was awesome to watch. Watching elite players practice skills and drills at a high level is enriching.

Part of me getting back into hockey ties to having an itch for my kids to play hockey. I know I can’t really control it. I can help influence it. The way I think about it is they will at least know how to skate. Who knows how far they take it from there. If they get into other things, I’ll be right there with them.

At work, you are either (1) executing someone else’s idea (2) executing your own idea. I’ve seen people early in their career be good at one and bad at the other. I’ve seen either direction to be honest. Someone early in their career could be good at moving on their ideas and not good at moving on others or vice versa. Personally, I was more natural with others so I had to work on idea generation over the years.

In order to progress, you need to do both. Awareness around which one you excel at is important and practicing the one that is less natural should be a priority.

My kids will be executing on my idea of learning to skate. At some point, they will execute their own too.

I took the Clifton Strengths Finder assessment in Q4 ’21 for the first time and found it both interesting and helpful.

If you haven’t heard of this test and how to interpret it, let me share a few quick facts about it.

• You answer a series of questions which takes about 15 minutes.
• There are a total of 34 strengths.
• The 34 strengths map to 4 different domains (1) Strategic Thinking (2) Relationship Building (3) Executing (4) Influence
• The results of the test provide you with your strengths in order of most to least and the point is to focus mostly on the top 5 but also the top 10.

You can see the domains which you spike most it. Another way to look at the strengths are they are the areas that give you the most energy. Where you score lower is where you likely get less energy.

I believe and subscribe to the idea that a huge part of career success / happiness / fulfillment is accomplished by knowing yourself well. In particular what your strengths are and where your energy comes from. Which is why I got a lot of value from this.

My results spiked mostly in the Strategic Thinking and Executing domains. All of my top 5 strengths were from either of these two. I also had strengths in my top 10 under the Relationship Building domain. Influence did not appear until 15 and 16 which I attribute to growing up as the youngest of 2 😉

1. Learner –> Strategic Thinking
2. Achiever –> Executing
3. Strategic –> Strategic Thinking
4. Belief –>Executing
5. Responsibility –>Executing
6. Positivity –> Relationship Building
7. Context –> Strategic Thinking
8. Arranger –>Executing
9. Developer –> Relationship Building
10. Individualization –> Relationship Building

I paid ~$50 to get a more detailed report of my results which ranks the strengths in order and gives insight into how to approach top / middle / and bottom strengths.

A few others on my team took the assessment at the same time so it became a great way to learn about others, how they are similar to and complement your strengths, and how to best work together.

A few colleagues had taken the assessment multiple times over a 10+ year stretch which seemed interesting to see how strengths change overtime.

April to June is my favorite time of year for sports. NHL and NBA playoffs are in full swing. Some might like September for the start of football or January / February for the Super Bowl run or the summer/winter Olympics. Those are all great times too, but I stand by the spring and the NHL and NBA playoffs. We lost this time last year due to the pandemic, so I am enjoying it even more right now.

I often immerse myself in not just the games but the pre and post interviews as well.

I played both hockey and basketball growing up. I loved playing both. I’d shoot hoops or shoot pucks in my backyard for hours counting down the days til my next game usually that Saturday. At around thirteen years old, I had to pick one and chose hockey since I began to take to it more.

I also like watching these sports in the playoffs because of how well teams are playing right now. Players usually come together in August of the previous year so the teams still in the mix in April are playing at their best. Communication is ironed out so passing and play making is at its highest level. You also start to see athletes have “out of their mind / body” type games. Jason Tautem’s 50 points Friday night is a good example and Pasta’s hat trick last night. You also have players stepping up in different ways that make a difference outside of offensive production (Kemba’s 8 rebounds Friday night).

Lastly, the start of sunny, warmer weather coupled with spending a few hours in an indoor stadium watching a game is fun for me. During the winter, you dash into the rink to get to the locker room because it’s so cold and dark. Leaving a hockey rink and walking into warm and/or sunny weather is an exciting feeling.

What does all this have to do with say career or business? Let me take a stab at some connections:

• Get your reps in. Do the equivalent of shooting hoops after school in your backyard for your career. That might be writing strategic thoughts down, diving into tactical to-dos, practicing in SQL, Python, excel, running a meeting, anything that gets you practice at something required to do your job effectively.
• Find that thing you naturally connect to. Through my hockey career, I played with and against a few people playing professionally today. It was evident during teenage ages, these guys would have a shot at playing professionally one day. It is because of the elevated talent and edge they exemplified when they got on the ice. They competed harder than everyone and had abilities that most don’t have. Find and cultivate that for yourself in your career. I read this and it began help me identify things I connect with. Pro athletes are extremely lucky to find what they are really meant to do at often single digit ages. That’s very special but also rare. Most of us need to work a bit harder and do it in our 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, etc.
• Don’t try to do everything. At 13 years old, I had to quit the extra basketball teams I played on to lean in on two hockey teams. In a job or career, try to choose wisely on what you do vs. what you delegate.
• Cultivate strong inclusive relationships with those you work with. Strong playoff and championship teams get that far because they are close and connected. They can make big plays with nonverbal communication for example. They likely don’t always like each other or see eye to eye but they put that aside when the game starts.
• Enjoy the small things. If you enjoy something like stepping out of a chilly rink into the beating sun, be sure to develop awareness of the small things you enjoy.

If you like playoff time like I do right now, enjoy the games today.